


can't nobody tell me nothin'

by limerental



Series: Witcher Equestrian AU [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse of witcher lore, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Equestrian, F/M, Horseback Riding, M/M, Mutual Pining, Mystery, Other, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M, dumbasses in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:55:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22897591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limerental/pseuds/limerental
Summary: sequel toi been in the valleyYears after Geralt abruptly ended their relationship and left Jaskier and Yennefer behind to return to his previous employment, Yennefer is closer than ever to uncovering the mysterious secrets that darken the legendary Kaer Morhen Equestrian Complex.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Witcher Equestrian AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1645816
Comments: 34
Kudos: 142





	1. Chapter 1

The horse arrives past dark, enveloped in a storm.

Seen from the house on the hill, the yellow glow cast by the headlights curving up the long drive seems to float like a lantern rising on its own through the darkness. Yennefer shrugs on her coat.

In a white flash of lightning, the familiar truck crests the ridge, swinging its lights over the front of the barn. A blink and the face of the illuminated barn hangs detached in the dark. The abrupt scream of a distressed whinny rings out from the trailer, only to be swallowed by the roar of thunder breaking overhead.

The shadowed figure that steps down from the truck clasps her shoulder and pulls her to him, fat droplets of rain beginning to strike around them as they embrace, held for a moment in the slow space before the downpour surges in a wall of water over the yard and drives them to action. The horse screams again, high and clear.

A fierce wind lashes the trailer with rain as the creature is coaxed to disembark. There is the hollow drum of anxious hoofsteps on the trailer floor, a long pause filled with gentle murmuring, and then, a frantic burst of movement as the animal strikes from the mouth of the trailer in a clattering rush.

Lightning tips the scene into greyscale as the stallion squeals and goes up, neck rounding against the charcoal sky, his handler leaping to the side to avoid the hooves that flail through the charged air. In the black after the flash fades, the horse's pale coat yet glows as though the bright tongues of lightning have lit him from within, white as bone.

The horse rears high again as thunder crests, the figure at his side straining to keep hold of him, voices shouting from the barn as the wide door slides open on its casters, warm light from the barn aisle spilling into the rain-slick yard. Falling back to earth, the white horse prances sideways, neck twisting as he is led, twitching with nervous energy. His handler sweeps him in a few tight circles to try to curb his distracted plunge forward, elbow dug high into the tensed neck as the horse's muzzle opens with another high-pitched whinny. Flanked by waiting stablehands, he finally quiets enough to be led into the barn and set loose in a stall for the night.

The barn lights doused and the help gone on to bed, Yennefer stands a long while at the stall door to watch the white stallion snort and shift as he settles in.

“Don't know what you want with him, Yen,” says Geralt beside her, hands shoved in his pockets, an imposing figure soaked through with rain. It's not commonplace for the manager of a facility like Kaer Morhen Equestrian Complex to hand deliver a purchased horse, but what he and Yen have certainly isn't commonplace. “Something wrong in his head, I think.”

“You don't see the potential?” she asks, hands curled around the bars on the door. The horse still breathes in sharp snorts, head high, ears pricked and staring off at nothing with a wide-eyed gaze.

He is pink-skinned and solid white from ear tips to tail, as though all pigment has been drained away. Said to be born like that, unlike the grey horses born dark and fading white as they age. No spot of color anywhere on his body. Even the pink skin of his face is pale and almost colorless.

His eyes gleam molten gold.

“I do see potential,” Geralt says. “The potential to get yourself killed.”

After a time, the horse finally starts to settle, lowering his head to rustle through the hay on the stall floor, and the pair go up together through the lightening drizzle to the house on the hill.

The house is all tall windows and slanting beams and fine-grained wood paneling, hung precariously on the edge of the hill as though the whole thing may tumble down. In the mellow light of her kitchen, Yennefer pulls two glasses down from a cabinet and pours a few fingers of whiskey. She goes to Geralt standing along the two story bank of windows that looks down over the dark grounds and presses the glass into his hand.

The back of his shirt is still drying, warm body heat sinking through as she kisses him between his shoulderblades, turns her cheek into the damp fabric. A hum rumbles through his back.

“I shouldn't stay here,” he says but doesn't move to go, lifts the glass to swallow a gulp of whiskey.

“You'll stay,” says Yen, drumming her fingers on his bent arm. “And go in the morning.”

And he does.

* * *

“The horse is a disaster,” Geralt says in the midnight silence of the shadowed loft, his voice a low grumble. “Not a shred of sense but smarter than anything.”

Yennefer lifts her head from his chest. Even curled together like this after sex, sweat still cooling on their entangled bodies, the horses are all they ever talk about.

“But talented,” she says. “I saw him at stallion inspection. Never seen one go like that.”

“Probably for the best,” he says. “He has no sense of self-preservation. No fear for things he should, and blind terror the next second over nothing. He's dangerous.”

“He's young.” Yennefer presses her lips against the bare skin along his ribcage. “There's time to work him out of it. Or maybe his foals will have better sense.”

“You want to breed that?” He laughs. “You're smarter than that, Yen. Tired of your other studs already?”

“They're fine horses,” she says. Her stud farm now stands three bred and trained at Kaer Morhen, all talented and exquisitely beautiful. They have all the fluid motion and sinuous muscle of horses plucked straight from a baroque painting, like someone's fantasy ideal of what a horse should be. “But Witcher is something different.”

“That's one way of putting it,” Geralt says.

“I know there have been others like him,” she says. She lifts her eyes to his as she trails a hand down his bare thigh. “In your program.”

Geralt is quiet, watching her.

“Young horses with something that little bit off. Unreal talent but batshit crazy,” she says. She taps her fingers against his hip.

“Come on, Yen,” he says, but she goes on.

She hums against his belly, kisses the flat ridge of his hip bone. “There's something about Kaer Morhen. Something... off.”

“ _Yen_ ,” he says again, and she looks up. “You can't keep prying into things like this. You need to stop.”

“It would be easier if you'd just tell me why,” Yennefer says, the echo of all the times she has asked before condensing in the air above the bed. She doesn't clarify whether she means _why did you leave Kaer Morhen all those years ago?_ or _why did you go back?_ or _why did you leave us?_

“You know I can't tell you,” says Geralt. “Stop asking. Stop looking.” A big hand cups the line of her head, fingers slipping between the strands of soft hair.

“I can't do that,” she says. “Too stubborn for that, remember?”

He hums. “I remember.”

A silence settles around them, broken only by the soft sounds of his fingers stroking through her hair. Usually this is where she has left it, allowing the conversation to fade into sleep, but something feels different this time. The wild-eyed horse or the storm or the long span of years loosening her tongue.

“Have you talked to him?” she asks against his belly, small and quiet. “Since you left?”

“No,” Geralt says. He doesn't have to ask who she means. “Have you?”

“Here and there. He's busy making a name for himself on the show circuit with that horse of his,” she says. “And he still blames me. For letting you go. Thinks I drove you away.”

“You didn't,” he says. Their voices rise just above a whisper. His fingers catch in a tangle along her scalp. “Neither of you did.”

“I know,” says Yennefer.

“Stop looking,” says Geralt. “If you know what's good for you.”

 _I do,_ she does not say. _It's right here._ She rolls to curl tighter against his side and down into sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

The mornings were like this:

Dawn broke in a warm spread of light across the bedroom above the lower barn, splayed in a peach glow across the three bodies intertwined on the bed.

Yennefer was always the first to rouse, an internal sense of time blinking her awake in the early dark, no need for blaring alarms. Some mornings she slipped free of her bed partners without a sound, dressed, and was off to work. Other mornings, she took it upon herself to wake them.

Geralt first.

Sprawled on his belly as he was, arm hitched up to pillow his head, all it took was a slow kiss pressed to the round of his shoulder or a healthy grab at his bottom to have him turning toward her to drag his stubble along the line of her neck, to steal a morning-sour kiss. His sleep-heavy hands fumbled to shift her until her taut stomach pinned his morning erection between their bodies, a wet smear at the head across the skin of her belly and he groaned and she smiled into the kiss and turned away from him.

Jaskier took more coaxing to rise into consciousness.

She made a game of it some lazy mornings, drawing things out to see how far she could take him before he woke. Drawing her fingers through the dark hair on his chest, twitching a nipple, taking him soft in her hands, filling more on each careful stroke until he stood rigid and twitching in her hold.

Geralt stretched back to watch, one big hand palming himself, foreskin slicking down off the head of his cock.

Jaskier was vocal, even in sleep, breathy and groaning by the time she had nudged him almost to the edge of orgasm, and she always knew the moment he jerked into full wakefulness when the fitful moaning gave way to curses.

“Fuck it, fucking--” he blurted, and she took her hand away at once, leaving his hips stuttering in the air and rolled back to drag her fingers along the scarred skin of Geralt's shifting knuckles as he pulled at himself.

This was Jaskier's cue to snag a condom or two from the bedside drawer and look to Yen to know whether to roll one down his own dick or toss it Geralt's way. Or both.

If it was Jaskier, then Geralt pressed close behind him, muttering into his freckled neck and Yennefer had her tanned thighs pinned around his hips, rocking down into his lap, and he took a smooth breast in each hand and only whined a little bit when Yennefer bit his ear for saying something cheesy about melons or--

If it was Geralt, then Jaskier squirmed on his belly, Geralt a firm line of muscle shifting down into him and Yennefer leaned her meager weight against his broad back back to sweep the silver hair behind his ear and kiss his neck there as she told him _rough now, he can take it, he can take you, give him something to really shout about_ and Geralt obliged as Yennefer's fingers dragged to pull on Jaskier's hair, her other hand buried between her own legs or slipping to tease inside of Geralt or--

If it was both, then Yennefer gripped the headboard, Geralt pressed above her, driving with long, slow strokes, and Jaskier fumbled at the small of Geralt's dimpled back, lubed fingers crooked inside until the muscles went lax and he gripped a peach fuzz ass cheek to push in and back out as Geralt grunted and lost his rhythm inside Yen or--

Or it shifted, lost in the liquid spill of early morning light and it was Yen between the two of them kissing down her body and Jaskier shivering as their hands teased him to the edge and Geralt with Yen's thighs wrapped tight around his head and Jaskier bent to lick a wet drag up the veined underside of Geralt's cock and it was the three of them gone slippery and melting together and the dawn warming the air in the room and the fluttery feeling that it could go on like this forever and that would be alright and that would be wonderful.

The mornings were like this, at least for a little while.

* * *

It ended in whispers, the way it began.

Rumors first, rippling like wind through a tall grass across the complex.

Grooms on their lunch break huddled close around a picnic table, one wolfing down a dry bagel, one sucking on a cigarette, one whispering.

_Tissaia's here. Tissaia? Tissaia de Vries. Fuck, she hardly ever comes down here. Too busy up north at her own place. Too good for us. Owning half the place you'd think she would-- What's she doing here? Who knows, who even knows, she's meeting with some old guy in the staff room. And Geralt. Geralt? Yeah, looked serious. They've been in there all morning._

A group of working students in a barn aisle with a small pause before the next ride of the day, one working leather soap into the straps and keepers of a bridle, one rolling up polo wraps, one with a hand on hip cocked to share the juicy news she overheard in the tack room.

_The fellow's from Kaer Morhen. Oh damn, same as Geralt? Geralt's why he's here. I heard he signed a non-compete. And he-- Oh shit, he broke a contract? That's what I heard. Or someone heard. He'll have to-- Why even leave, like, who in their right mind would voluntarily ditch that place, I mean-- Escaping a jilted lover, I bet. You see the way he is with Yennefer. Oh for the last time, there's no way that one's true. Yennefer's too stone-cold. Yeah, fucking hell, she'd open up her legs and ice cubes would-- shhh, shh._

A bevy of grooms along a line of grooming stalls, one on a stool to braid a flaxen mane, one leaning his weight into the line of a mare's taut shoulder to work the soreness from the muscle, one slacking on work to sigh dreamily.

_I heard Geralt's leaving. Wait, who? Gods, you know him, of course we all know him. Oh I'd like to know him. I'd ride that pony into the hills if you know what I-- God, yuck. Anyway, I heard he's fucking that posh twat, the one with that big bay. Jaskier? No way, I heard it was the other one, what's her name. Yennefer? Yeah, he's fuckin' her. Well, I heard, he fucks her and lets Jaskier watch. No goddamn way. Those two? In the same room without killing each other?_

Riders waiting on horseback in the center of the ring for another student to sweep clear over a course, instructor barking corrections, standing their horses so close their stirrups clink together while they lean to gossip, knees brushing.

_His name's Vesemir. Who? The Kaer Morhen guy. They're still in the staff room. Someone said he's who trained Geralt. So then what? Geralt quits? Quits or gets blacklisted, I bet. They can do that? Hell, where have you been? Kaer Morhen's got more money and power then-- well fuck, they're tangled up in the whole industry. Poor Geralt. Shouldn't have fucked with that. It looks bad for this place. Tissaia knew when she-- Explains some things though. Sticking around that lower barn when he could have been in charge of the place._

Midday saw the rumors well-saturated, half the complex with an ear tipped toward the closed staff room door, waiting, hardly daring to breathe lest another snatch of whispering be missed.

Finally, it opened.

Tissaia stepped through, looking as stern and purse-lipped as ever, then an older, grizzled man with bowed legs and then, a grim-faced Geralt, following after. The three nodded, shook hands, and parted from one another.

The rest of the day, the eyes of the whole, swarming complex kept a close watch on the lower barn manager as he went about his usual routine. He worked slow and steady. Mucked out the stalls one fork of manure at a time and pushed the wheelbarrow to the dump. At dinner time, he went out to the pasture gate and whistled, brought his charges in for dinner leading three in each hand, the horses bumping their muzzles against his shoulders.

He threw hay, tossed grain to those who needed it, and topped up their bedding for the night, fine shavings spinning in columns of evening light. He swept the brick aisle free of errant dirt and shavings and bits of hay and leaned against the handle of the broom, eyes closed, to listen to the gentle, equine sounds around him, this small semblance of a moment of peace.

Then, suspicions of the whispering complex confirmed, he prepared to leave.

He hitched the trailer along the fenceline and disappeared into the little apartment to drag out meager belongings and pack them away in the red pickup. A saddle, a box of paperbacks, a duffelbag, a wooden tack trunk.

It was while he was haltering the red mare to lead her up to load that Jaskier came to him. The world had started to go blue at the edges, a watery, pink sunset leaking out of the sky. Even the most dedicated eavesdroppers could not strain to hear the last conversation between them.

* * *

It ended like this:

“Geralt,” Jaskier said. “What are you doing?”

“I have to go,” he said and clipped the lead rope with a little snick. Jaskier blocked the stall door, hands on his hips. “I'm going back to Kaer Morhen.”

“You don't have to do anything,” he said. “A non-compete? That won't hold up in court, come on. You don't have to leave if you don't-”

“Jaskier,” he said. “I'm going. Get out of the way.”

Geralt put a hand on his shoulder as though to move him, and something wild struck Jaskier then, hands coming up to grip at the older man's wrist, fingers curled to brush his knuckles. His heartbeat surged in his head, blurring away all thought but _I can't lose him. I can't I can't--_

“Listen, I'll come with you,” he said, a note of panic raising his voice an octave. “Take me with you.”

“What? No.” The swiftness of the denial made something shrivel up in Jaskier's gut. “You have a business here. A life.”

“That doesn't matter,” Jaskier said, his fingers tightening. “None of that matters. You can't leave, not now. Not when I-- you can't leave like this. It isn't fair that I--”

“Damn it, Jaskier,” Geralt growled and pushed him hard in the shoulder, loosening the desperate grip on his wrist and knocking him to stumble back from the open door, arms flailing to keep his balance. “No one cares about what you think is fair or not. The whole goddamn universe doesn't center around you!”

Jaskier shrank back against the opposite line of stalls to watch Geralt lead the mare out and down the aisle and into the blue haze of dusk, sparing no glance back.

* * *

It ended like this:

Yennefer came to him as the trailer door groaned closed with a whine of hinges, and she lay a hand on the small of his back as he dropped his head forward to rest his cheek against the cool metal, a ragged breath exhaling from his lungs.

“You here to tell me to stay?” he asked in a low grumble, and she shook her head before remembering he could not see it.

“No,” she said. “You broke a contract. Did Tissaia know when she hired you?” She’d spent her youth following Tissaia across the Continent as her working student, so Yennefer knew the kind of woman she was. The kind who would ignore something like a non-compete if it could benefit her.

“She knew,” said Geralt. His voice had more roughness than usual to it at the edges. “Thought I could lay low here longer than this.”

“People notice you, Geralt,” said Yennefer. “You’re… noteworthy.”

“Going to ask me to take you with me?” he asked.

“Geralt, darling, I might love you, but not that much,” she said, hoping he could not feel her slight trembling through the hand that soothed along his back. “I have responsibilities. I wouldn't leave that behind. You shouldn't either.”

He nodded against the trailer, and she was struck by the sight of him. This big man with his broad shoulders shaking just slightly and his knuckles gone white gripping the door handle.

A little splinter of an ache bloomed behind her ribs. If only she could peer inside his head to know what he was thinking. She knew even if she could, he would slither away from her like water from a cupped hand. As in the very beginning, he was unknown and unyielding still.

As they stood there, the night crept up and took from her everything but his silhouette, bowed forward in the dark.

“I'll see you around, Geralt,” she said, stepping back to let her hand fall. He moved around the trailer and swung into the truck, the door thwacking shut behind him. Lit by the yellow glow of the truck's dome lights, she caught his gaze in a side mirror. He gave a little wave and a grimace of a smile, and she crossed her arms to watch the truck and trailer go up the gravel drive, watched until she could feel every eye in the whole place watching her as well, even in the blackness, and then, she turned on a heel and went home.

* * *

Afterwards, foolishly, they tried for a little while to continue things.

Without Geralt to ground them, the sex was messy, frantic, edged with violence. Yennefer's fingernails stung red welts down Jaskier's back and Jaskier sucked purpling bruises into her collarbone and they fucked like they were trading blows, frenzied and crushing.

It wasn't something they planned, barbs exchanged from across a barn aisle ending in reckless fumblings in empty horse stalls or impulsive, midnight trysts when one of them looked across the way to see a light still glowing in the windows of the townhouse opposite and the other swung the door open before the second knock and reeled them in by the front of their shirt.

Once, sequestered in her shadowed bedroom, Yennefer pressed his face down into the mattress with her hand clenched in his chestnut hair, the straps of a harness biting into the skin of her hips as she fucked him open.

“Fucking hell, gods-- _Geralt_ ,” Jaskier gasped, not muffled enough in the bed to pretend she didn't hear. She struck a sharp palm against his bare ass and tugged harder at his scalp, and he cried out and finished in weak pulses across her clean sheets, tears wetting his cheeks, hands curled tight into fists.

Yennefer thought to comfort him, after, kicking free of the harness and crawling beside him in the too big bed. He didn't move, shoulders hunched and trembling, face pressed into the rumpled sheets, and when she touched his hair, he whined with a sob.

“Jaskier--” she began, but he twisted away from her, wild-eyed.

“You could have asked him to stay,” he growled. “He would have stayed if you'd asked. Not for me, but for you, he would have--”

She should have said _you know that's not true, you know he cares about you_ or _he would have left anyway_ or _he didn't leave because of us and I want to know why and I'm going to find out why and if I can, I'll bring him back_.

“It's better that he went,” she said instead. “This was stupid. This would have ended badly.”

“It already did,” said Jaskier, bitterly, darkly, and he tugged on his clothes and left her.

* * *

After that, the two maintained their distance, orbiting only close enough to keep a pulse on the flitting rumors about the other.

_Turned up one morning with a letter of resignation in one hand and a check in the other to buy that big bay he's always favored. Just ditched his whole training business and all. Say he's planning on riding professionally on the show circuit this year. Passed on his working students and horses in training and didn't look back._

_And Yennefer? Overheard her planning with her old friend, Triss. Those two always had a dream of running a stud farm together one day and seems like they're finally after it. Good for her, then. I hear the place they're looking at up in the mountains is beautiful, like a picture from a magazine. Like some fantasy come to life. Like a dream._

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

It's not easy, in an industry this close-knit, to avoid one another for long. It seems that fate winds them together, ever closer, and the three of them are always one breath apart, one aisle away, always at the same competitions and arenas and clinics and sales. Over the years, it takes a concerted effort for Jaskier to keep himself distant, but Geralt and Yennefer don't resist, meeting in the cramped quarters of one another's horse trailers, in rented cabins provided by competition venues, in hotel rooms on the edge of nowhere towns.

It's just sex, it's just physical comfort, it's just stress relief, and if sometimes in the midst of it one of them forgets and reaches for another who is not there, neither says a word, just presses their foreheads close together, a silent _I miss him too_ punctuating the gesture.

After the sex, they lie together and talk about the horses until it's no longer talking about the horses, not really.

Yennefer asks the same question she always has, and Geralt sighs.

“Why do you care so much, Yen?”

“Because you left Kaer Morhen for a reason,” she says. _And you left us for a reason,_ she doesn't say.

“Not everything has a reason. Some things just are the way they are.”

“Not in my experience. Nothing just is unless you make it that way.”

Yennefer is self-made, everything she has now was dragged up from nothing. Geralt's different, constrained and shaped by circumstance, and she knows that small life at the complex was his attempt to resist and she knows it hurts him badly that he had to let that go. She remembers him saying _there's a point where you have to let go of the expectations placed on you and make your own way forward_.

“Who made you, Geralt?” she asks.

“Hmm,” he hums. “Don't you have enough dirt on me? You writing a book?”

He tells her anyway, in bits and pieces over the years, from somewhere near the beginning.

* * *

He was just a boy when his mother sent him to Kaer Morhen under Vesemir's care, and he spent long years as a leggy barn rat following after the older boys. Mucking stalls through the day and sweeping and dragging hoses and throwing hay and goofing off with his fellows in the evenings, swinging on a rope into a brown river, playing cards in the hay loft by lantern-light, sneaking cigars on the back hill.

Nevermind that being the scrawniest and youngest one there most times meant finding himself dunked in the river and swindled out of his belongings at card games and standing lookout while the older ones smoked. He didn't mind so much, not really, not when it felt for the first time like he could belong somewhere.

But when Vesemir singled him out for personal instruction, a young man blossoming into his height, the other boys turned their cruelty on him more often than their camaraderie. The others would never be more than grooms or stablehands, but Geralt rose among them as apprentice to the head stable manager. They tore at him with mockery and then with insistent pranks that turned to violence.

The sprawling stone dormitory up the hill from the barn became more suffocating than comforting, and until he was caught and chastised, he spent many nights sleeping in horse stalls, burrowed down into the straw.

* * *

“And no one stopped it?” asks Yennefer, her lips pressed against the back of his neck, arm slung over his stomach.

“Builds character,” Geralt says.

* * *

Set up in his own barren apartment after his sleeping arrangements were discovered, he kept to himself, steady at his work, only the horses for company most days, and the years stretched on like that.

Under Vesemir's watch, his responsibilities shifted and changed, until he knew intimately every element of Kaer Morhen's program.

He helped with the broodmares in the breeding barn, from cover to foaling out, and he handled the new colts and fillies, was there with them when they were trailered away from their mothers and set out to pasture for weaning. He stood in a huddle of fuzzy babies in the muddy youngstock pasture and let them nibble a bit at the sleeves of his jacket.

He spent time in the bustling training barns, backing gangly young horses and teaching them to carry themselves through their gaits, taking them over their first fences, and finishing them over the years into confident, dependable mounts. He took them on to the sales and exhibitions and shows and inspections, leading gleaming, young stallions and fidgety, high-necked yearlings and long-suffering mares with snorting foals at their sides.

He buffed shine into coats and wrapped legs, mucked stalls and fixed fences, lunged and exercised, oversaw breedings and waited on foal watch, handled and competed, trained and vetted.

He knew it all, saw it all, the whole breadth and span of the place. Kaer Morhen was old, had been around for centuries, and the stable blocks were an odd juxtaposition of weathered stone and blinking cameras, twisted iron bars and billowing fans, vaulted ceilings and gleaming tack rooms. He knew it all, and he was set up to take Vesemir's place managing the whole lot once he retired and that day was coming soon, the old man limping about and leaving the work to him more often than not.

He knew it all, the rust, the dirt, the cracks in the foundation.

Except for the parts that he didn't.

* * *

“That seems a bit much. One man doing all that?”

“It's just how it's done. It's how Vesemir was trained. Learn the workings of the whole place, every inch.”

“Until there's no secrets left,” says Yennefer.

With the wry twitch of a smile, he says, “You could say that.”

* * *

“So how's ole Witcher been?” asks Geralt in one bed or another, some months after the stallion's arrival. “You soul bonded with him and won the big race to save the family farm, yet?”

“Well,” says Yennefer, and that's answer enough. Geralt laughs into her hair.

“I told you,” he says. “That horse is barely good for glue.”

She swats at his chest and rolls away from him.

“You're in a mood today,” she says.

Months on from Witcher's arrival, there has been no change in temperament, no settling into routine. They made the mistake the first week of attempting to release him into a small pasture adjacent to the barn, thinking his frantic energy could be quieted with some time in turnout to be a normal horse for a little while.

Not so. She and Triss were saved an afternoon of chasing the horse across the property only by some quick thinking in funneling the loose stallion into the barn aisle. Since then, turnout has been in the well-secured indoor arena only.

With some luck and no small amount of prayer, he can be caught and led. Sometimes, he is even docile, staring dully into space for prolonged lengths of time like there is something singularly interesting in the cobwebbed corner of his stall. But he has been known to erupt from those quiet moments into a blind frenzy at the smallest provocation.

“What goes through his head, do you think?” Triss asks every time she watches the stallion fly about the arena as though pursued by some unseen force.

“Eldritch horrors,” says Ciri. Yennefer's young protege has volunteered to attempt to see if Witcher can be made into a riding horse. So far, she hasn't yet made it into the saddle and had halting success with groundwork.

“I'm surprised he hasn't killed himself yet,” says Triss. Ciri snorts.

“Or killed me,” she says.

“Don't worry,” says Triss sweetly, patting the younger woman on the shoulder. “If you die, I'll make sure your headstone reads 'I told Yen he was too damn crazy and a really terrible investment'.”

In bed with Geralt, Yennefer sighs.

“If I didn't know he came straight from you, I'd say he was abused or something. It's the queerest thing, the way he stares off,” she says.

“Always done it,” Geralt says. “Since he was a foal.”

“You knew him then?”

“Saw him born,” he says. His fingers still in trailing through her hair, as though lost in the memory.

“His tests came back,” she says.

“You tested him?”

“For the usual things. No adrenal issues, no genetic defects, no hormonal imbalances,” she says. “He doesn't have ulcers. Scopes and scans are all clear. No kissing spine, no joint damage, no signs of old injuries. Whatever's wrong with him is just his own unique kind of crazy.”

“I could have told you that.”

“Had him color tested as well,” Yennefer says. “Thank you very much, I now have Triss thinking I only bought the horse to breed colorful babies.”

“Hey, no one told you to fixate on him.”

“That's what Triss says. 'As your business partner, I would like to once again say you are being very ridiculous about this horse.'”

“She's right,” says Geralt, and Yen huffs.

“He's negative for grey,” she says. “Negative for all known white patterns and a few the geneticists haven't even published yet. Genetically, he's black.”

“Hmm.”

“His sire was liver chestnut, dam black. Not a lick of white hair on either. Parentage verified.”

“I know his history, Yen,” says Geralt. “You could have just asked.”

“I did ask. And I don't think it's the truth.”

“It happens,” he says. “It's a random de novo mutation. They spring up out of nowhere or they aren't documented or they hide for generations until the right parents combine or--”

“He's just a random mutant, then,” she says, and he knows she doesn't believe for a second that that's the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "and the horse was PURE WHITE what does it MEAN" god yennefer it's probably just a de novo W mutation of the KIT locus producing a white or nearly white phenotype, don't you know anything about equine color genetics?


	4. Chapter 4

Snowmelt has just begun to turn the flushed green pastures of the stud farm to brown sludge when the first foals of the year stumble into life.

Yennefer kneels in fresh straw, dark hair falling loose from her messy bun, to swipe her fingers along the nostrils of a new filly. She is black, the color of an ink-blot, and her new legs are already twitching to stand. The bay mare standing above her tongues a mussed forelock, and Triss coos from the stall door.

“She's darling,” says Triss, chin on her hands. “Looks hardly a lick like her father.”

“Mmmm,” hums Yennefer and can't help a delighted smile as the filly forces out a full body sneeze that tips her off-balance and startles her poor mother. She's a perfect, ordinary little thing. This is the third and last of the season by their wild stud, Witcher, and she is just as ordinary as the last. Solid-colored, mellow-eyed and with all the bumbling normalcy of a newborn foal, no sign of their father's hellish temperament, no shock of white.

“Maybe it'll develop later though.” Triss shrugs. “That would be our luck.”

“We'll see.”

“Don't say I told you so,” says Triss.

“I told you so,” says Yen. But she's thinking about what else it means, what she will ask Geralt when she sees him again.

In the tradition of the Registry, the foals get 'W' names like their father, so the black filly is called Whimsical and the red colt born before her is called Wanderlust and the black colt with a blaze before that is called Watermark, and they're all fine animals. Even tottering infants as they are, Yen and Triss can see it, see the way they'll fill out and muscle up as they age, but they're still just-- Typical. Normal.

And through that foaling season, she looks not just at Witcher's foals. There's the ones by the majestic blood bay, Aard. By her cremello stallion, Axii, whose pale coat ripples with muscle like cold marble. By Igni, a fiery chestnut whose proud head seems chiseled to perfection. She looks closely at the young things by their mother's sides, fresh and wet, honed by the finest breeding from carefully chosen mares put to her legendary Kaer Morhen studs and she sees--

Nothing special. Ordinary.

Eight months old, fully-weaned and grown awkward in the ugly duckling way young foals do, she loads Witcher's three offspring on a trailer set for the month-long Winter Festival. Geralt will be there, and she will--

Well, she doesn't know what she'll do, but it all feels very close to a head, whatever this is.

The Winter Festival is held at a sprawling complex, and all the biggest names in the industry coalesce there at some point during its duration. It's five weeks of competitions, exhibitions, clinics, and hooplah, and Yennefer finds herself wishing she could feel the same awe and thrill of excitement she did at her very first Festival, back when she was just Tissaia de Vries's new working student, awkward and fumbling and blinded by it all. She feels numb now, looking out over the crowds.

“Come on, Yen,” says Ciri. She's in the stall with the three, docile weanlings, reddened fingers twisting braids into Whimsy's mane, and she frowns at Yennefer. “Cheer up. The Winter Festival only comes once a year.”

“It comes every year,” says Yennefer.

* * *

It's a few days in before she spies Geralt across the way and goes to him, falling in step beside him. The festival grounds are a mess of parked horse trailers and campers, vendor tents and fluttering flags on the edge of white swathes of groomed sand. One of the smaller indoor riding arenas has been transformed into a temporary stableblock erected with cluttered aisles of canvas stalls.

“You look tired,” she says to him as they step together into the stableblock, and he grimaces.

“You look like you're planning something,” he says.

“When am I not?”

He stops at a line of stalls draped in Kaer Morhen's colors, doors already fluttering with prize ribbons. The red mare, Roach, cuts a familiar figure in one of the stalls, and Yennefer steps up to her, stretching a hand through the bars to scratch her neck. Geralt brings her to these things ostensibly to keep the little ones calm, but his young horses stand calm as statues in their stalls. The mare is here for Geralt's sake alone.

“I have something to show you,” she says.

Her stud farm's line of stalls is not decorated so grandly and does not take up quite so much of the aisleway. It's just her and Ciri at the Festival this year with Ciri's grey mare, Fiona, one locked tack stall and one for their hay, and a single stall shared by Witcher's weanlings.

Geralt pats the grey mare's muzzle and greets the three, inquisitive creatures that nose along the bars. The boldest one, Whimsy, tests the sleeve of his shirt with her teeth.

“Hello, little ones,” he says.

Yen leans against the stall to look at him, sees the ways he really does look tired, the worn lines at the edge of his mouth, the wrinkle of his brow. “Do they look familiar?”

“Should they?”

“They're Witcher's first crop,” she says. “And you were wrong. They're sane as anything. Completely normal. You'd hardly know who their sire was.” She watches him, sees the twitch in his jaw, and her words are careful, pointed. “It's uncanny.”

He has a hold of her by the arm suddenly, a grip that does not quite hurt but is not gentle, drawing her away from the crowds.

“Yen,” growls Geralt as they reach a quieter aisle along the corner of the arena, empty and shadowed. “I told you to leave this alone.”

“And I told you that I wouldn't.”

“You have to be careful,” he says. “If you told anyone else, implied anything--”

“I haven't. Not yet.”

“But you haven't been subtle about it. Nothing good can come of you poking around.”

“Nothing good can come of this situation in general,” she says.

She steps closer to him, eyes flickering down the corridor, and continues just above a whisper.

“Geralt, if there's something unethical happening, I can't just stand by and watch. I can't believe you would just stand by. For what? To protect your reputation? Your career?" She meets his dark look with a stubborn tip of her chin, not willing to back down, not now. "I don't think Witcher was bred," she says firmly. "He was made, and you know something about it and you're not saying and I don't know why you can't just _tell me_.”

“It's not that simple, Yen.”

“It is that simple,” she hisses under her breath. “I've worked with these horses for years. There's something about them. Something in their eyes. Not just Witcher. My others as well. Geralt, I know there's something done to them, and I know you're a better man than this. You're a _good man_ and I know that you--”

A kiss interrupts her, startling and soft, Geralt's fingers tugging on the front of her jacket. She makes a confused noise in her throat, and his expression as he breaks the kiss is all exasperated fondness.

“Yen,” Geralt says firmly, their foreheads pressed together. “Shut up. You're completely incorrigible and frustrating and just _the worst_ and--” He lets out a shaky breath. “And you're not wrong. About any of it. But this conversation really needs to be happening somewhere more private.”

And he leads her back down the barn aisle by the hand.

* * *

The murmuring hubbub of the stableblock is interrupted by the sound of hurried footsteps down the dirt aisle, almost at a run, and an outraged, raised voice in pursuit.

The dark bay horse blinks and flicks his ears toward the sound, lifting his head reluctantly from his hay just as the stall door clicks open and a flustered man bursts through, hurrying to fumble the latch shut again and drop to a squat beside the horse's lumpy hay net.

Lute snorts at him.

“Oi, don't judge me,” Jaskier breathes, trying to quiet his gasping breath as he crouches back against the canvas wall of the temporary stall to listen closely for any signs that he will be pursued and discovered. The stall is a temporary thing of fabric and metal, erected for the Festival in one of the venue's smaller riding arenas. Small being something of a misnomer for the ampitheater-like space zig-zagging with honeycombed rows of identical stalls. Easy enough to get lost in. Or to effectively ditch a persistent follower.

From where he squats, he can peer through a frayed split in the thick, canvas wall and see partway down the aisle. Empty. Some outraged someone is still hollering his name interspersed with colorful insults, but the shouts have grown distant, down the wrong aisle and away.

“Hope they aren't bright enough to check the directory for my stall number,” he mutters to the horse, and Lute sighs and resumes tugging at his hay net, each pull bumping it against Jaskier's side. “We've really made it now, huh, Lute? Hiding out from our adoring fans.”

Jaskier settles back against the wall, his boots scuffing through soft shavings. At least the stall is freshly-cleaned, a task he prefers to personally attend to, eschewing grooms or other help. It's just been him and Lute for years now, ever since he left the complex and struck out on the show circuit, and he's made a pointed attempt at making his own way. No more standing in the shadow of his family's money and good name. His success these days is _his_ , and if that has earned him some more unsavory attention as well then--

“Well, ok in this case, not a fan so much as-- how was I to know she was engaged? Not likely to groom horses with a ring on, I guess.”

Jaskier sighs.

“Let me tell you though, this is what success looks like, Lute. 'Don't abandon your training business and return to professional riding again', they said. 'You're too old for it and there's better riders out there, you'll never win on that beast' blah blah blah, well, we showed them,” he says, voice quiet. “If the naysayers could only see us now.”

In the past few years, he's risen among the ranks to be notable enough to earn rides from a handful of elite clients and have more difficulty disappearing faceless into a crowd. Knowing his family's name is different than recognizing him and his big bay as the dashing pair on the cover of Sporthorse Weekly holding up last year's Continental Champion ribbon. Even at a festival as important as this one, where all the big names of the industry are likely to make an appearance, he's unlikely to easily slip away unnoticed.

He is just about to muse out loud at his surprising luck so far this year at avoiding a particular big name or two, when he overhears a familiar voice travel down the aisle.

“--told you that I wouldn't,” Yennefer is saying. Speak of the goddamn devil. The sounds of the busy goings-on in the stableblock echo from the towering ceiling, but his aisle, intentionally chosen for its relative seclusion tucked into a far corner, is quiet and empty.

“You have to be careful,” says a deeper, equally familiar voice. _Fuck._ Beside him, Lute's ears prick, and Jaskier scrambles to grab at the horse's halter to keep him from lifting his head and being recognized. The horse blinks at him.

“Shhh,” he says dumbly and waits for the pair to move past. Instead, a shadow moves across the stall and stops. _Of course_ he moans internally. _Of fucking course of course of--_

“But you haven't been subtle about it,” says Geralt in that same, rumbling voice he has not heard for years. Jaskier has made a very practiced effort to avoid the man at all costs. Which hasn't been hard, honestly. Having returned to manage a good chunk of Kaer Morhen's breeding and training program, Geralt is hardly in one place for long. Yennefer has been more difficult, because Yennefer is everywhere, has her greedy little fingers at the pulse of all corners of the industry.

In his Sporthorse Weekly interview, the cheery reporter had asked about their rivalry, what he thought about her up and coming breeding program, whether the rumors about a salacious past relationship between them were true, and Jaskier had smiled sweetly and told said reporter to go fuck herself.

The two outside the stall are also trying to be clandestine here, voices lowered. Even so close, Jaskier has to strain to make out the words.

“--can't just stand by and watch,” Yennefer is saying, followed by rushed whispering not loud enough to catch anything but an emphasized word or two. And then, the unmistakable quiet sound of lips meeting, a small sigh, a shifting of clothing. _Oh great, oh fucking great, of course of fucking course--_

“Yen,” Geralt grunts, then says something that sounds decidedly like _take this somewhere more private_ , and the two move away together. Jaskier listens to their footsteps retreat well down the aisle before he lets out a sharp breath from his nostrils.

“Fucking hell,” he says to Lute and releases his hold on the horse's halter. “Fuck. Of all the fucking fuck.”

The horse's head pops up to survey the barn aisle with a gentle nicker. Lute has always been fond of Geralt, not just because he frequently brings snacks, and who can blame him? The man is all gentle hands and careful words and steady warmth. Who wouldn't fall in love?

“Yeah,” Jaskier says, feeling very small and silly crouching against the stall wall. “Yeah I guess I miss him too, buddy.” He has tried not to, spent a good chunk of the past few years finding willing partners to emphasize how very little he missed Geralt, but it's futile, it's a wasted effort. It still stings like the first day, the breath still shoved out of him at odd times remembering the man's hard, careless push in the lower barn, the coarse words.

“Sorry to say it, Lute,” he says and is appalled to find that his voice breaks on a hitched breath. How silly, how completely cliché, how pathetic. “I doubt he'll be swinging by to bring you cookies anytime soon. Or ever again. Pushed me right out of his life, unfortunately, and somehow still clings to that-- that--”

He can't dredge up hatred for Yennefer anymore, not really, not the way he used to.

Not when he can close his eyes and still remember her shiny-eyed and mussed in bed with him after Geralt left, as pathetic as he's ever seen her, the two of them curled together after a round of desperate, clawing, aching sex and her mumbling on the edge of sleep _why_ did _he leave us? why did he why did he--_

Jaskier had comforted her, cooed into her hair and held her and said _I don't know I don't know I don't know_ , and then she had turned right around and dragged herself back to him, that bitch. Rumors of Geralt and Yennefer's consistent, intimate meetings across the years are reported in the barnyard gossip mill as plainly-stated fact. It's always Geralt and Yennefer, Yennefer and Geralt, the industry's unspoken power couple, the envy of the masses, and Jaskier is--

“No, you know what?” he says, pointing a decisive finger at his horse. Lute's muzzle twitches, hay dangling from his whiskers. “This is stupid. All of this is stupid. I'm not going to just roll over anymore and _let her_ have him.”

“By the end of this festival,” he says in a rush of dramatic energy as he stands with a flourish. “She'll be finished.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love lute so much i love lute with my whole entire being


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have never read the books/played the games so took extensive liberties with vesemir's characterization for plot-related purposes. sometimes you just require an old mentor dude to wax poetic about horsies in your niche horse au.

The busy workings of the Festival blur around them as Geralt leads Yennefer on, their hands clasped together, fingers entangled. The boom of an announcer drones in the distance, the shrill whinny of a horse rising here and there across the grounds, and conversation flows across them and between them. Eyes catch on their joined hands, and the whispers flow from lowered mouth to ear and onward, swirling like an ocean current that buoys them along.

Geralt's thumb swipes across the back of her palm, and she follows after him.

He leads her down a row of parked horse trailers, many doubling as residences for the length of Festival, and stops alongside a massive, expensive-looking affair and raps at the door to its living quarters.

“Come on in,” someone says from within, and Yennefer steps up behind Geralt into the trailer to see Tissaia fucking de Vries of all people sitting on a bar stool in the gleaming kitchen, a mug of tea cupped in her hands.

“Hello,” says Yennefer, dumbly, flustered and breathing more heavily than a short walk across the grounds should have elicited. The older woman gestures to a little caddy of fancy tea pods.

“Have some chamomile,” she says, the same prim and measured voice that guided Yennefer's instruction for the first decade of her equestrian career. “And maybe you'll calm down a bit.”

Supplied with said tea from the woman's rather complicated brewing machine, the three of them sit at the shiny kitchen island together, Geralt blowing steam from his mug, Yennefer blinking into hers.

“So,” she says. “Can we explain again what exactly's going on?”

So Tissaia does so again, like she is standing in the ring at Yennefer's knee as she and her mount wait for the start of their class, patiently repeating the layout of a complicated course.

“Geralt works for me,” the woman says. “And he works for Kaer Morhen. He supplies me with information about certain proceedings, and I supply him with a whole lot of money.”

“It's not that much money,” grunts Geralt. Tissaia rolls her eyes.

“You're a spy,” says Yennefer. It sounds incredibly ridiculous spoken out loud in the bright, little kitchen. “You're a double agent?”

“Yeah, sort of,” says Geralt, and Yennefer slurps a scalding sip of her chamomile.

“I've known there was something up with Kaer Morhen for many years,” says Tissaia. “But only had any hope of doing anything about it when Geralt fell into my lap. Unlike some of us, I was not so foolish as to try to expose things without knowing exactly what I was getting into.” She levels a pointed look at Yennefer, who makes a valiant attempt at staring back without flinching.

“Things would have been different if you had just _told me_ ,” she says.

“It's been convenient that you fumble about unknowing,” Tissaia says, waving a hand. “Keeps the scrutiny on you and off of us.”

“Scrutiny?”

“You think an entity as influential as Kaer Morhen would not keep close tabs on anyone asking too many questions? They know you suspect something. They've known for years. You've been lucky so far that they have not yet sought to eliminate the threat.”

“Eliminate the-- gods above, you two are being very dramatic about this," says Yennefer. “I'm right though. You said I was right. About what happens there. That their horses are-- that there's something done to them.”

Geralt touches her wrist, her pulse leaping under his hand, and looks at Yennefer with a small, regretful smile.

“Yeah, Yen. There's something done to them.”

And he tells her the truth.

* * *

A quiet gloom settled in the barn through the waning hours of the night, a living silence full of the horses shifting and huffing out low, restful breaths. One black mare in a far stall did not rest, her sides quivering, a hoof pawing through shavings.

In a place as wealthy as Kaer Morhen, there were all manner of high tech means of keeping an eye on the expectant mares in the stable block: night vision cameras, monitors arrayed in the little office off of the stable manager's apartment, foaling alarms set to alert should a mare go down for prolonged lengths of time.

Geralt preferred to do things the old-fashioned way, present in the barn, camped out in an empty stall with a cot and a sleeping bag and a dim light to read by, listening to the mare's breathing, waiting on a hitch or grunt.

The black mare snorted for the third time in as many minutes, and Geralt dog-eared a page in his paperback and went out to look again. He peered into the stall to see the faint line of her back curled away from him, her sides rising and falling. The buzzing light above flicked on to reveal the membrane appearing between her hind legs, the foal's front hooves already pushed from her body.

He did not go in to help, allowing her own heaving muscles to will the small foal into the world. It was over quickly, a grunt and a spill of liquid, and the new creature lay in a pile of glistening limbs at her rump, steaming in the cool air of the barn.

Its wobbling neck rose at once, delicate muzzle quivering, ears still slicked back by the white amniotic sac. The pale membrane a ghostly contrast to the foal's dark coat.

* * *

Geralt wrote out the foal's registration papers himself, kicked back in a chair in the dusty office for a boring day of filling in forms. <i>Witcher, he wrote, <i>black/brown.</i> For identifying marks, he noted the lack of white markings and the little whorl of hair at the crook of his neck.

In late spring, Vesemir found him at his work in one of Kaer Morhen's lofty-ceilinged barns and pulled up a wooden stool, old knees creaking as he sat and met Geralt's questioning gaze with a crooked smile.

“Son,” he said. “I'd like you to know you're primed to replace me sooner rather than later.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said in acknowledgment, and Vesemir laughed.

“Not right away, of course, still got some good years of hard work left in this body, but you'll shadow me more closely this season. No more Kaer Morhen secrets left when we're through. You understand?”

“I'm honored,” Geralt said slowly.

“Now, don't get too excited,” joked Vesemir and stood to clasp his arm. His eyes sharp as they meet Geralt's. “I would hope you know this isn't something I would extend to just anyone. There's some secrets if not guarded that would see the end of this place.”

“I understand,” said Geralt, because he was no fool, had heard the rumors, toed at the edge of the undercurrent that ran through this place. The great Kaer Morhen mythos said _horses are born here the likes of which exist nowhere else across the whole Continent, as though alien creatures dredged up from the depths of the sea, as though shaped in the fire like blown glass, as though spun into life on a loom._

* * *

It was not long until his first lesson.

Geralt held the black mare's halter as Witcher, a few months old now, stood quietly in Vesemir's hold while he readied a needle against his neck.

“You've heard them say it, haven't you?” he was saying, the foal soothed with a steady hand. “Kaer Morhen horses are drawn up out of the earth. They are molded from clay and lit by a spark from the heavens... It's not so mystical as all that.” He chuckles, gestures with the needle. “It's simply... one little elixir.”

“A single injection,” he said and pressed down the stopper on the syringe. The foal jerked in his hold but settled with a muttered word. “Given while the horse is still on the mother, just before the inspection that will officially admit them to the Continental registry.” He pressed a bit of gauze to the foal's neck and withdrew the needle. “There, that's all it is. Soon, it will bring on the change.”

“It's a well-documented phenomenon,” said Vesemir. “They say Kaer Morhen horses bloom quickly into works of art and then are shaped further by our illustrious training program. If the same excellence cannot be reproduced with our stock in outside breeding programs, it is simply a testament to our rigor and experience.”

“Isn't that something people notice?” Geralt asked. Vesemir released Witcher and stepped back, the foal shaking its head.

“Our name shelters us from questions. It's simply something that is known and accepted. A Kaer Morhen horse bred and grown elsewhere will be middling in comparison, will not have that divine fire, the true inspiration that one bred and grown here does. They say it's in the mountain air, the lush pasture, the water drawn up from some mineral-rich well.” Amusement rose in Vesemir's voice.

“So, now what?”

“We wait,” said Vesemir. “Sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes it drags out. And sometimes, yes... there are side effects.”

“Something happens to their minds,” Geralt said.

He had had many such horses in his care over his years here. Horses with all the talent and beauty and grace of their fellows that nevertheless were just that little bit off. Nervous, quick to leap away from shadows, slow to trust, seeming to stare off into a middle distance full of monsters that no one could see. Kaer Morhen horses were of two temperaments, most having the disposition of a well-oiled machine, steady and unflagging, while some had all the unpredictable fervor of a gale-force wind.

“Sometimes, yes. There is always a risk. You cannot pour such unparalleled athleticism into an animal without the chance of some of their sense slopping out.” A bark of laughter as Geralt pulled the mare's halter off and set her free in the stall to bump her nose against her foal and check he was still in one piece.

* * *

The next morning, a creature so pale as to be transluscent shivered at the mare's side. Dumbfounded, Geralt clicked open the latch and slid open the stall door. The little thing's eyes jumped to him, rolling in its head. It squealed and startled but did not move away as Geralt's trembling hands smoothed over its neck to find the familiar whorl there at the crook.

“It happens,” said Vesemir at the open stall door. “Rarely, but it does.”

“His forms,” Geralt said. “His papers say he's solid black.”

“Paperwork error,” Vesemir said. “Not so unusual. He'll go to inspection this week with corrected ones.”

“Where do we say it comes from? His sire and dam aren't-- I've never seen a color like this.”

Blue veins showed along the pale line of Witcher's muzzle. The only color seemed to remain in his golden eyes, blown wide to stare at something beyond Geralt's head.

“People don't look so closely. They will see him as he is. No one has questioned it in all my years.”

“No one?” Geralt asked.

“Well,” said Vesemir. “No one who mattered.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yen, jaskier, and geralt used to have one singular brain cell but once when jaskier had it, lute ate it so now they have none brain cell

Jaskier thinks things are going very well so far in his attempt to break up his two old flames.

Nevermind that he hasn't actually seen Yennefer or Geralt around since he overheard their shadowed conversation this morning. Not seeing them flaunting their romance about is a victory in itself. Nevermind that he's sure they're sequestered in some dark corner somewhere, up to more discreet romantic flauntings. In the meantime, he's been attempting not to think about that and making great strides in formulating his plan to dash them apart.

Long gone are the days of skittering out of Geralt and Yennefer's way, oh no, he has every intention of becoming incredibly inconvenient from here on out. It's all very clear to him now, what dastardly tricks he will unveil, what devious endeavors he shall employ in order to catch them unawares, yes, highly-thought out, elaborate, intricate schemings by which he--

He doesn't have a plan.

Though he racks his brain for hours, bouncing ideas off of his poor, non-plussed horse, as the massive overhead lights along the roof of the stableblock flick off one at a time casting he and Lute into relative darkness, he ends the night with no better idea than “openly confront them and express his feelings”.

Which is just a terribly stupid idea, frankly, but espionage has never been his strong-suit and no one who spent five minutes with him could ever accuse him of being _intelligent_. He's always bubbled up with each silly, ridiculous emotion he's ever felt, brimmed with brazen lack of subtlety in all avenues of life, and that's mostly been just fine before all this. He feels things too strongly and too openly, sure, but feelings always boil over and pass, or he can hone that intensity into the kind of dogged focus that has made him noteworthy.

But it's been years, it's been almost five years, and he still can't stop feeling furious and pathetic and _hurt_ , the same way he did after it all ended, and he thinks maybe it will all go away quickest if he can just shout all that at them, maybe launch into an impulsive, petty fight like the good old days.

“I am a very stupid man,” Jaskier tells Lute and goes to thumb through the stable directory.

He finds Kaer Morhen occupying an entire aisle, but knowing Geralt, he's not likely to be hanging around in the midst of things there and Jaskier isn't too keen on the idea of making a scene in front of the whole entourage of the most influential farm on the Continent. Yennefer's stalls are in a more quaint section of the stableblock, just four stalls along the opposite wall, and maybe he won't find them there tonight, but he could wait there or leave them a message or maybe he could--

He sets off before he can change his mind.

The aisles are lit only by dim light strips here and there at ground level and the occasional swinging, yellow lamp above a stall where some groom or another is still at work, wrapping legs or braiding manes for the morning.

The dirt floor softens his quiet steps as he approaches Yennefer's stalls, the aisle standing empty. No lights on in this row, no sound except for the gentle rustling of horses fussing with hay nets, settling down for the night.

The door of one of the stalls stands ajar, the flicker of a flashlight spilling briefly into the aisle.

 _Odd_ , thinks Jaskier as he approaches, some prickle at the back of his neck urging him to slow almost to a tiptoe, steadying his breath to a whisper.

A grey mare stands with head hanging in the first, darkened stall he steps past, and three foals huddle together in the next. The littlest one, almost invisible in the darkness except for the whites of her widened eyes, is breathing in quick little chuffs, head tipped toward the open door of the tack stall beside her.

Strange voices ghost through the dark, and Jaskier stills in the aisle to listen.

“--sure this is wise? A little premature, maybe?” a man is saying.

“It's what the boss wants,” says another man. “She shouldn't have fucked around with shit she didn't understand.”

“But she hasn't yet.”

“And now, she won't. Or if she tries, no one will take it serious.” There's a rustling sound, the unmistakable dull clatter of grain in a bucket. “That all of them? I can't fuckin' see. Too damn dark.”

“That's all of them.”

“Let's get out of here.”

 _Shitshit_. As silently as he can manage, Jaskier fumbles to flick the latch of the weanlings' stall and for the second time that day, drops to a crouch in a darkened stall. He doesn't have time to pull the latch shut again from the inside so keeps the stall door from swinging open by gripping the support bar down the center of the canvas, hoping the two men that exit Yennefer's tack stall don't notice the slight quiver of the fabric or the open latch.

The pair pass by without pause. Jaskier cracks the door to peer out as they head down the shadowed aisle and knows them immediately as men he's seen at work alongside Geralt, Kaer Morhen men, so what on earth had they been doing messing with Yennefer's things in the dead of night and what on earth is Jaskier supposed to do about it and what--

Something grabs the back of his shirt and tugs hard, and _oh shit oh fuck_ , they've seen him after all and found some impossible way to come up behind him and he's going to die here fallen flat on his back on the ground of a filthy horse stall and isn't that just embarrassing.

The little black weanling blinks down at him on his back and nibbles at the fabric that bunches at his shoulder, gives another tug.

“Oh,” breathes Jaskier, willing his heart not to explode out of his chest and kill him dead. “Thank you for the heart palpitations, I'll be going now.”

* * *

After shooing the baby horse away and clambering up and out of the stall, Jaskier stops at the tack stall next door. The door is closed tight, a lock slipped shut over the latch. No sign that the men had been there moments before. _Maybe it wasn't what it looked like,_ he thinks. _Maybe they had a key, were doing Yen a favor._

Not likely, based on what he's just overheard.

The stall is of the same construction as those that house horses, except that billowing, black drapes hang across the front, blocking the contents from view. The typical showground tack stall houses riding gear, grooming supplies, feed, supplements, and other equipment necessary to keep close to the horses, and any number of those things could be tampered with.

Listening to the hush around him for anyone approaching, Jaskier pushes the drapes aside and peers into the gloom of the stall. Fucking dark is right, and he doesn't know what he's looking for. It's mostly just shapes that he squints to pick out. Folding chairs leaning against the wall, a pile of twisted lead ropes, discarded boots, and a few blocky trunks with four feed buckets sitting neatly on top, in which he knows each horse's morning portion of grain has likely already been measured out.

He recalls the sound of grain clattering, the lowered voices of the men.

“Oh shit,” he says. “They're trying to poison them.”

* * *

The next morning, Ciri's shriek upon finding Jaskier snoozing in their hay stall echoes across the stableblock.

“Hi,” says Jaskier, groggy with exhaustion, slow to rouse after a good night's sleep and slower still after a long night spent curled up on bales of scratchy hay. “There's poison.”


	7. Chapter 7

Yennefer wakes in the grey haze of dawn, huddled close against Geralt's side. She does not hurry to leave the bed, shifting to her belly to watch the even rise and fall of his chest. If he had his way, he would be sleeping out in the barn on a cot pitched in his tack stall, but when the conversation with Tissaia finally petered off well past dark, she had coaxed him back to her little rented cabin on the edge of the Festival grounds.

She wishes she could be there to do so more often. Drag him away from that world and cajole him down into restful sleep. He looks younger like this, the frayed edges softening. Each time they have come together over the years, he has looked that much more harried and strained. Tired.

To know why does not come with the feeling of resolution she has anticipated. Nothing feels resolved.

 _Why did you leave Kaer Morhen?_ she recalls asking a dozen times. _You wanted some peace, you got tired, you burned out, you saw something there that didn't please you._ Saw horses like Witcher, hollowed out and changed and blown to pieces and knew watching that happen and orchestrating it would change him just the same.

The morning light has turned the bed pale orange, bruised with liquid shadows. She reaches a finger to touch the smooth plain of his brow, relaxed in sleep, to slip down the broken ridge of his nose.

 _Why did you leave us?_ she has not asked.

If she closes her eyes and allows the coral-walled bedroom of the rented cabin to slip away, she is in the apartment above the lower barn and she has just blinked awake, the sun beginning to spill through the slanted skylights, and she is holding her breath in that paused moment before deciding who to wake first.

One is a firm line of bare skin feathered with goosebumps, the other a tuft of dark hair visible swathed under the stolen duvet. One sprawls to her left, one curls to her right, and neither knows the long moment of consideration she dedicates to it each morning. Which one to wake.

It's just sex, it's just a grasp at brief intimacy, it's just a blip in time, but she has the strange and insistent desire that it should be _fair_ , not in any set ratio, not by days of the week, not one-two-one-two-one-two, but leveled out all the same. For as long as they do this, for however many hours they have each other, she needs that fairness, an equal footing.

The world's not fair; it's cruel, it's crushing. But these small things, she can attempt to make so.

She opens her eyes, and the mattress is too lumpy-soft, the sheets rough and printed with little horseshoes along the edges. There is only Geralt, the pads of her fingers catching on the stubbled dimple of his chin. No duvet-stealing pain in the ass swaddled up behind her. No warm pool of sun through skylights.

She aches suddenly with the unfairness of it all.

 _Why did you leave us?_ she wants to wake him and ask. _Why did you allow them to ruin that?_

She draws her finger to still on the bow of his lips. For all the things she knows this morning that she didn't yesterday, does she know this man any better?

_If you had just told me the truth, then I could have--_

She can't say what she would have done. It may have ended up just the same, and it doesn't matter now.

It's painful, the thing that tightens in her chest when she searches his sleeping face, so she rolls away from him to start the morning.

* * *

In the cramped kitchen, her slices of toast have just about reached their desired charred level of blackness, when a commotion outside interrupts her breakfast, punctuated by a sharp rapping on the door.

Yennefer huffs. Sure, it's later than she's normally up and in the barn, but there's no need for the dramatics.

She can't get one morning off to digest the confirmation of years of mystery and intrigue, oh no, take a measly extra hour to sit in her fuzzy bathrobe eating toast and suddenly Ciri forgets that she's a competent young woman now and can handle the morning routine without Yennefer there to hold her hand.

A whining voice outside the door rises over the persistent rapping.

“Ouch, ouch, _fuck_ , c'mon, watch the shirt, please, this is _not_ necessary at all. I would have just followed you, ouch, ok, if you would just--”

Yennefer swings the door open.

“I found this sleeping in our hay stall,” says Ciri, dragging a bedraggled-looking Jaskier with a hand fisted in his collar.

“Sleeping in our-- what the hell, Jaskier,” says Yennefer.

“Kaer Morhen,” Jaskier blurts. “I overheard them messing with your things last night. They're trying to poison your horses.”

Yennefer glances sharply around the row of rental cabins, reassuring herself that there’s bound to be no one around this time of morning, and reaches to drag the little idiot inside before he can shout more incriminating things out in the open.

“Keep your voice down, you stupid bastard,” she says and offers a tight smile to Ciri standing on the stoop. “Thanks, love, would you please handle the morning for me? Don’t feed anything until I update you. Oh and keep this quiet, please. I trust you implicitly.”

“Sure, Yen,” says Ciri with a shrug. Though her eyes say she would far rather stay to witness the drama unfold than be filled in later. “He's your problem now.”

“You are a fucking pain in my ass,” says Yennefer as the cabin door slams behind them and she drags the protesting man to the quaint kitchen table.

“Hey!” Jaskier protests as he is pushed back into a wobbly chair. “I didn’t _have_ to tell you about this. I didn’t _have_ to spend the night in your hay stall to make sure you didn’t unknowingly feed your horses _deadly poison_.”

“I have a phone,” says Yennefer flatly, and he flushes.

“Well-- oh fuck off, it was the heat of the moment.”

“Every time I think you can’t be more of an imbecile, you find new ways to surprise me.”

“Yeah well, every time I’m-- that I think that you’re-- you’re a bitch!”

“Stunning grasp of syntax, darling,” says Yennefer as she smears a pad of butter onto the black crust of her toast.

“I’m trying to be nice here, Yennefer,” says Jaskier. “Or courteous. Or something. I could just leave and not tell you anything.”

“You’ll tell me,” says Yennefer. Her words are made less menacing by the shower of crumbs as she bites into her burnt toast.

Jaskier opens his mouth and closes it, and they spend a long moment looking at one another.

She’s barefoot in a pale pink bathrobe, her dark, sleep-tangled hair hanging over one shoulder and a little smudge of yesterday’s eye makeup still remaining along her lower lashes. Jaskier is slumped back in the kitchen chair, white breeches somehow perfectly unstained, though his shirt is untucked with a button or two gaping open, collar askew. Bits of hay cling to him here and there.

It’s the most either of them have looked at the other in years.

“How did I manage to forget how goddamn loud you two are?”

Geralt looms in the doorway to the bedroom, bare-chested, flannel sleep-pants slung low on his hips, greyed hair loose across his shoulders.

“Hi, Jask,” he says, tone almost sheepish. “There’s hay in your hair. Like a lot.”

Jaskier makes a noise that is decidedly not a squeak, and Yennefer hides a laugh behind her toast.

“Ooh, stunned speechless looks good on you,” she says. “Spares us the pain of suffering your blabbering.”

“Shut _up_ , Yen,” he says, pitch rising. A warm flush has settled along his cheekbones. In the doorway, Geralt seems not to know what to do with his hands, finally settling on stepping into the room toward Jaskier and reaching to brush a wisp of hay from his disheveled fringe.

Yennefer, he has not looked at closely for years, but Geralt, he has doggedly avoided even glimpsing. His wrinkles have deepened, further hardening his face, but otherwise, he is the same man, unchanged. The same face that had curled into a snarl in the lower barn as he shoved Jaskier away, told him _the whole goddamn universe doesn't center around you._

There is a tentative softness to his expression now, brows drawn slightly together, amber eyes searching his. A hand brushes loose more hay and shifts to rest lightly on the side of his head. Jaskier can hear his own heartbeat hammering against the rough palm that cups around his ear, and Geralt’s lips part and then close again with a breath through his nose, as though what he means to say evades him.

Jaskier thinks, _oh, I’m going to forgive him. Just like that._ He reaches up to curl his fingers around Geralt’s wrist, rubs a thumb along the back of his hand.

“Very touching. Adorable,” says Yennefer. “Can we hurry this reunion along and get on to the apparent deadly subterfuge involving _my goddamn animals_? Please?”

Geralt huffs and tips forward to, gods above, press a kiss to the top of Jaskier’s head. There is no denying the squeak Jaskier makes then, face tucked into the warmth of the man’s bare chest. Geralt’s head rests against his a moment, arm falling along his back in what Jaskier realizes is an _embrace_ of all things.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles into Jaskier’s hair. “Didn’t mean it.”

“You’re forgiven,” he breathes.

“Yes, yes, we missed the little bastard, but can we just--”

Yennefer realizes her mistake an instant later, when the accidental slip of _we_ is what breaks the tender moment and inspires a gleeful smirk on said little bastard’s extremely irritating mug. He leans in the chair, arms slung over the back, oozing smugness.

“Oh, you missed me, did you? Oh, you _pined_ for me.”

“Jaskier. I literally hate you so much.”

“Oh you _don’t_ though, darling, you _yearned_ \--”

“Geralt, please could you strangle him? Just a little.”

“Sorry, Yen, you’re stuck with him, I think.”

“ _We’re_ stuck. You both are stuck with me, that is, unless you’d like to be stubborn about it for another half a decade or--”

“I’ll stick something somewhere, if we don’t _get back to the issue at hand here_.”

“Is that a promise, then, because I could use something stuck--”

“Jaskier! Fucking talk!”

* * *

The man does, eventually, allow his gleeful laughter to taper off, and the three settle around the little kitchen table, legs bumping together.

“How do you know someone is trying to poison my horses?”

“Because-- Well, I don't know _for sure_ , it's poison, but I know they were fucking with your grain last night. Two men. I recognized them. Definitely Kaer Morhen. One of them wasn't too sure about it and the other one had a mouth on him.”

“Eskel and Lambert.”

“Oh, tell me, do your men make a habit of poisoning other people’s horses?”

“It’s not poison, Jaskier. Probably.”

“Very reassuring,” says Yennefer.

“It’s-- this has happened before,” Geralt says, voice strained. “If it was up to me, it wouldn’t, but it’s… Somebody gets too close, somebody asks too many questions… drum up a scandal around them and that’s the end of it.”

“You’d think someone would notice blatant _poisoning_.”

“Not poison, Jaskier,” huffs Geralt. “Doping. Someone’s meant to notice.”

“Oh,” Yennefer says. “The competition tomorrow. There’s a drug test.”

“Your horses would have tested positive.”

“But wait, that’s-- that sounds highly unethical, Geralt,” says Jaskier.

“But poison’s just fine, then?”

Jaskier flushes.

“Well-- so, what are you saying? Kaer Morhen’s got some sneaky, illicit, extremely questionable competitor drugging thing going on? And that’s all fine and peachy, that’s a thing you’re cool with, Geralt?”

“You dumb little shit, that’s what he’s trying to tell you. I swear to everything, I could wring your neck sometimes,” says Yennefer.

“Oh, only sometimes? I’d call that a--”

“Jaskier,” says Geralt, but he looks at Yennefer as he does. She nods. “Since you’re here now, it’s only fair that you know the whole story. It’s not just drugging. It’s bigger than that.”

And together, they tell him.

* * *

“Holy fuck,” says Jaskier.

“Yeah, no shit,” says Yennefer.

“Hmm,” Geralt sighs. “I’m going to need a fucking drink after this.”

* * *

‘After this’ ends up being when Yennefer steps into the bedroom to call Ciri and fill her in on some of the details and reassure her that she’ll be around soon enough to sort things out.

Geralt pulls a bottle of whiskey from his bag, pours a splash into a glass scrounged out of the cabinets of the rented cabin, and offers another out to Jaskier.

“Geralt, it’s eight o'clock in the morning,” he says but accepts the glass and downs a quick swig, blanching at the taste. “Do you just carry that on you, then?”

“Only way I’d survive this blasted festival,” says Geralt. “And you two.”

And it’s nice, it’s familiar, to sit there in the kitchen together, taking small pulls of lukewarm whiskey. It’s reminiscent of lazy, afternoon trail rides through pine forest and quiet moments in the dappled shade of the lower barn. Jaskier can close his eyes and remember it, falling in love.

Some part of him fears the other man would disappear before he opened them again.

“I mean it, you know,” says Geralt.

“Mean what? That you’re sorry for being a brute and breaking my heart?”

“Yeah,” he says, swirling the whiskey in his glass. Their legs brush together, and Geralt, hunched forward against the table, lifts a hand to rest it on Jaskier’s knee. The touch is casual, gentle, and when Jaskier extends his leg to slot between Geralt's, the man starts up a soft stroking of his thumb along the inseam of his breeches.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Jaskier asks in a quiet voice.

“You’re really so sure you two wouldn’t have hated me,” says Geralt.

“Can’t speak for Yen,” he says. “But I don’t think I could even if I tried.” _And I’ve tried,_ he doesn’t say.

“Yeah?” Geralt leans imperceptibly toward him, whiskey glass held loosely in the hand that isn’t curled around Jaskier’s knee.

“Yeah,” says Jaskier. “I mean, you have to know I loved you from the very beginning.” Geralt stills, and he realizes how that must have sounded. “Still love you,” he clarifies. “Still very much do.”

It’s then that Yen steps back into the kitchen, call ended. She sees them bent close together at the kitchen table, the whiskey in their glasses, the way they lean into one another, and her face warms with a fond smile.

“Ah, there’s my men,” she says, presses a hand to each of their heads as she looks from one to the other. “My idiot men.”

Then, she grabs the whole bottle of whiskey from the table by its neck and tips it for a lengthy swig, throat working. Wipes the back of her hand with her mouth with a devious shine in her violet eyes.

“Why don't you two come back to bed a while?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [scene where they bang]


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this still isn't porn because jaskier had emotions on me. typical

It is awkward at first.

The three of them falter, unsure how best to fit back together. Not when so much time has passed with so much still left unsaid. There is a hovering uncertainty that they should even be doing this at all or at least not at this very moment ( _So, what, we bang first, then thwart the whole deep, dark industry scandal thing?_ asks Jaskier, which earns him a cuff about the head from Yen.)

Geralt stands in the middle of the room, holding onto Jaskier by the scrunched back of his shirt, the smaller man just buzzed enough not to complain too loudly about it, gripping Geralt’s bare bicep in turn. Yennefer is kneeling up on the bed, the robe dropped down her slim shoulders to the floor, and she frowns seeing her two men still standing there, staring at her all bewildered as though trying to figure out what happens next.

“Up here then,” she says and pats the sheets and fucking _clucks her tongue_ at them the same way one would encourage a sluggish horse to pick up the pace. “Clothes off first, please,” she tuts at Jaskier. “Though I should make you shower honestly. Sleeping in my hay stall? Really?”

“It seemed like a reasonable solution at the time!”

“You smell like a horse’s ass.”

“I smell great at all times, and you know it. Currently, I smell like a warm hay field. I smell like a summer breeze. I smell like--”

“You smell like somebody dragged you through a manure pile. Or ten.”

“It was _your_ stall. If it stinks that bad, that’s on _you_ , you--”

“Would you too _shut up_ and kiss already?” Geralt growls.

The two immediately and enthusiastically obey.

Yennefer has Jaskier pulled up to the edge of the bed, her fingers deftly flicking open the buttons of his shirt even as they meet for an open-mouthed kiss. Behind him, Geralt guides the collared shirt down his arms and lets it fall in a rumpled pile. Yen tugs on his white undershirt until Jaskier breaks their kiss to rip it over his head while Geralt’s hands come around his waist to undo his belt and it’s just a _lot_ , it’s too much all at once after so long without.

“Fuck,” he gasps into Yen’s mouth as Geralt hooks his thumbs in his waistband to press his breeches and briefs down over his hips, but then Jaskier has to pull away from Yen again to peel the clinging fabric off his legs. Very unsexily. “ _Shit_ ,” he curses as he trips (quite nakedly) over the elastic of his own pant leg and Geralt catches him by the arm before he lands on his face.

“Unbelievably graceful,” says Yennefer, sitting back on her heels. “It’s a wonder how you even stay on that big, ugly horse of yours.”

Jaskier is about to say something cutting and very clever back to her, but the way she’s kneeling naked and confident up on the edge of the bed, dark hair loose down her back, the firm line of her stomach and soft round of her breasts, makes him feel mostly like he should kiss her again.

So he does.

Knees pressed against the mattress, one palm fitting along the swell of her hip, other hand tangling in her hair, he pulls her to him with a sigh. Her mouth is very soft and nice, and the skin along the edge of her jaw is like velvet under this thumb. With her up on the bed, he has to lean up to meet her rather than down, and it’s nice, it’s good.

Against his back, Geralt is a warm swell of body heat, chest not quite touching. His stubble drags along Jaskier’s shoulder blade, both hands shifting to dwarf his hip bones.

Yennefer’s own hands have risen to cup each side of Jaskier’s face, cradling his chin as she kisses him.

“How silly we’ve been,” she sighs into his mouth. He’s less annoying when she’s kissing him, for one, and it’s also just-- it’s nice. “Geralt was the asshole,” she says and nips his plush bottom lip, soothes away the sting with a suck. “We could have been doing this for years. Grouchy dickhead be damned.”

“I’m right here,” grumbles Geralt against Jaskier’s neck, and Yennefer leans to meet him in a quick peck over Jaskier’s shoulder.

“You know I love you, Geralt, but it’s the truth.”

“Hmm,” he hums.

Her fingers flex on Jaskier’s jaw as she turns her attention back to him. His eyes are very blue, the messy fringe of his chestnut hair brushing the edge of his brow, some scraggly bits of hay still clinging among the strands. He’s a little round-eyed, that look he gets when he’s been knocked off guard.

“And you,” she says. “Don’t know how it happened, but I love you too, you little bastard.”

He grins, cheeky.

“I knew it.”

With a huff, she reaches to tweak a nipple, and he squeaks.

“But hang on,” says Jaskier, squirming as her mouth follows her fingers to press the wet flat of her tongue against his nipple while one of Geralt’s hands shifts to swallow his erection in a warm hold. “You can’t just--” He wriggles, groaning, caught between the two of them. Moving back from Yen has him tucked closer up against Geralt, all solid wall of chest and muscled arms bracketing him, and oh, it’s very nice, so nice that he could almost--

His hands rise to shove at Yen’s shoulders, push her back. She relents, falling onto her heels again, frowning.

“Jaskier?”

“Hold _on_ , would you?” he whines, and Geralt stills against him as well, Jaskier suddenly very cold as the larger man takes half a step back, one hand still curled around his hip.

He points an accusing finger at Yen. “You can’t just go ‘oh Jaskier, we missed you, oh Jaskier, we’re so silly and foolish and emotionally stunted’ and expect me to just--” Waves an arm to represent whatever is occuring here. “Just fall back into bed with you the same as before like nothing’s happened? Like both of you didn’t _leave me_.”

“Jask--” starts Geralt, and Jaskier twists in his hold to jab the finger in his direction as well.

“Nope, you especially don’t get off that easy. That was what we call an extremely entry level apology, Geralt, and I might love you but I have more self-respect than to just-- ok, no I don’t have very much self-respect, but I do deserve a bit more than that.”

Geralt’s brows are drawn together, looking pained, and Jaskier half wants to relent and soothe away the wrinkles there with a kiss. But no, it can’t be as easy as all that. He’s not as easy.

“I told you why I had to leave,” Geralt says.

“And that’s very understandable. Thwarting our evil horse industry overlords? Very good reason for fucking off to save the day,” says Jaskier. “But that doesn’t explain why you had to leave _us_. It just doesn’t.”

“It really doesn’t,” says Yennefer, but that has Jaskier twisting back to her again. He somehow manages to look just a wee bit terrifying even fully naked and still aroused.

“Oh, but you don’t get to say that though, because you had him the whole time, didn’t you? How many times did you meet up without me in the past five years, hmm? Had a good laugh together about idiot Jaskier and his stupid feelings?”

“It wasn’t like that,” says Yennefer. “It was just--”

“Just sex? Just happened? You know that sure as hell wasn’t and has never been true, Yennefer,” he says, sucking in big breaths.

“And now of all times, it’s ‘I love you, Jaskier’, right when you’re the one in control of shit again, huh? That doesn’t count. That’s not being vulnerable, that’s just hoping if you say some sweet words I’ll fuckin’ lie down and forget the past few years and just tumble in bed and then what? What happens when something else goes down and you fuck off? What happens when you leave again?”

He steps back to level them both with a disappointed gaze, his arms across his chest, cheeks flushed. The fact that his cock is standing at attention between his scrawny legs only slightly detracts from the reprimanding figure he makes.

“I can’t shut it all down like you two. I can’t act like nothing’s happened and it’s all fine and you didn’t ditch me for five fucking years.” He huffs, blows out of the corner of his mouth to shift his (still hay-laden) hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know how you two survive out in the world with absolutely negligent emotional literacy, I swear to the gods. ‘Nevermind, Jaskier, we love you, please pretend like we haven’t completely ignored you for half a decade and come to bed.’”

Up on the bed, Yen looks satisfyingly surprised, her eyes wide and hands stilled on her bare legs. Geralt’s gaze is downcast, shuffling awkwardly on his feet. It’s silent in the room for a long beat of stillness.

“Right,” says Jaskier with a self-conscious cough. So he can now add ‘gone on an emotion-fueled, needy tangent instead of what was working up to be some outrageously good reunion sex’ to the list of stupid shit he’s done. “Now is anyone going to maybe… say something? Preferably something really embarrassing. So it’s not just me doing all of that.”

“Jask,” says Yen, and he’s definitely never heard her voice sound like that, all hesitant and tender. She’s certainly never called him that. Hardly ever called him his name at all.

“That’s me,” he says. Stupidly.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She slips her legs off the end of the bed and reaches for him. Still very naked. Her dark hair gone a bit frizzy where Jaskier’s hands had caught in it earlier. Very soft, nice mouth tipped into a small frown. “I know I’m not any good at this. We’re not any good at this.”

Geralt grunts in agreement.

“You can say that again,” says Jaskier.

“We’re not any good at this,” she says again, more firmly.

“Ok, one more time, for good--”

“Jaskier, I swear, I’m trying to apologize here, so if you interrupt me one more time I’ll--”

“You’ll what? Pout at me some more? I’m still not hearing the heartfelt apology bit.”

“Maybe because you won’t stop fucking _interrupting_ me while I’m--”

“While you’re threatening me with bodily harm?”

“I’ve done no such thing, but I can and will smother you to death if you don’t _shut up and let me talk_ ,” Yen all but shouts.

“Now that sounds like bodily harm to--”

“ _Jaskier!_ ”

“Fine, ok, fine,” he says. Mimes locking his lips and throwing away the key. Because of course he does.

Yen fumes. Of all the people in the world, it’s this absolutely exasperating, melodramatic, frustratingly endearing little bastard she had to develop gooey, tender feelings for. _Of course. Of fucking course._

She stands and goes to him, pulls him down into a hug. Her slender arms around his middle. He’s stiff in her arms, arms still folded. _In more than one way_ , her brain supplies unhelpfully, and if anything, he looks more aroused than when he started shouting, his pupils blown wide and breath coming in ragged pants.

 _Not the time,_ she thinks tucks her head against his chest, tightens the grip of her arms. Hopes maybe that could be enough to convey what she’s feeling but knows it won’t be. Jaskier isn’t Geralt, and even if he’s perfectly capable of reading into the gesture, he needs and deserves more than that. Hell, Geralt probably does too, now that she thinks about it.

“I’m sorry,” she says against his collarbone, more firmly this time. “I’m at much at fault in this as Geralt.”

Jaskier, for once, holds his tongue and allows her to continue.

“I could have stayed. After he left us,” she says, eyes closing. She remembers curling with him in one townhouse or another, trying to pretend like she wasn’t heartbroken.

It was just sex. Just physical. Just something that would have fallen apart in time anyway. How could it last? Life wasn’t like that, wasn’t _fair_ , and any good thing she ever had was only borrowed.

“I didn’t know how to deal with any of it, Jaskier,” she says. “Still don’t. Usually I just shout at my problems until they go away.”

“Hasn’t worked on this one,” says Geralt, who has stepped up close to them. He presses a hand to the small of Yen’s back, another resting on Jaskier’s shoulder. “This one shouts right back. Very loudly. Even when he’s not around.”

“Mmhmm,” Yen agrees, lifts her head from Jaskier’s chest to tap her temple. “Right in here. Constantly shouting.”

“Are you two trying to be romantic?” huffs Jaskier. “Because you’re not doing a very good job.”

“There were times when Geralt and I were together-- don’t make that face Jaskier, I’m emoting here-- there were always times I’d forget,” Yen says. “I’d reach for you. Forget you weren’t there.” She touches Jaskier’s jaw with a tentative press of fingers, meets his eyes. “I’m sorry that we were too cowardly to go after you or figure our own shit out. I am.”

“Now, was that so hard?” asks Jaskier, a tremble in his voice betraying his attempt at nonchalance. “Though that’s not really how it works. You can’t just apologize _for_ Geralt, you know.”

“I can and I did,” says Yennefer. “If I’m emotionally constipated, he’s so backed up, it’s a wonder he hasn’t gone septic.”

“I don’t really like this metaphor,” says Geralt.

She pats his shoulder. “If we waited around for you to express yourself properly, we would miss out on a whole lot of kissing. I’d rather get to the kissing.”

“Oh, you think that’s it’s that simple, huh?” says Jaskier, but his posture has relaxed, one fallen to sling low around Yen’s waist. He laughs when both Yennefer and Geralt look briefly stricken. The poor prickly bastards, stuck with someone intent on forcing them to confront and express their closely-held, rarely-examined feelings. “I mean, ok, it is. It very much is. Apology accepted and all. The kissing sounds very nice.”

And so, with a sigh from Yennefer as she tips up to meet him and a scratchy press of Geralt’s mouth along his neck, they get back to that, simple as anything. Or simple as it ever will be between the three of them.

 _And that’s just fine,_ thinks Jaskier as their arms hold him up, their hands find every warm inch of his skin, their mouths make a go of following after their hands to press along every part of him. _That’s more than enough for now._

**Author's Note:**

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